


1am

by machibouke



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, M/M, New Year's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machibouke/pseuds/machibouke
Summary: In their busy lives, Nino decides it's never too late for a New Year's Eve kiss.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had to write a quick, slightly sappy/cliche new year's eve drabble between these two - I just had to. With a side of concerned!Sho about Jun's recent issue. Happy belated new year's everyone! I hope I got all of the times right in this, lol...

 

They’re quietly celebrating New Year’s Day (technically) together on the way home from the rush of appearances for Countdown and _Kouhaku_. Just the four of them are slumped in the van (Jun having directly gone home on account of “not feeling well” – but they all understood, especially with what had been going on recently – so they let him off without protest or guilt trips).

Nino feels bad for thinking so, but with Jun out of the picture for the early morning, he sees his little plan of action going a whole lot smoother than if the other man _were_ here. Now all he has to do is, _somehow_... distract Aiba and Ohno. Shouldn’t be too hard. He’s done it plenty times before.

“Don’t you guys want to go get a bite before we head home?” he asks lightly.

“Bite?” Aiba echoes absently, lost in his phone, his fingers flying across the screen. His grin is typically huge, his ego probably still caught up in the high of hosting one of Japan’s hugest year-end shows. “I’m hungry. Where to?”

Nino realises he doesn’t have that much time left to execute what he wants to do. He taps his phone screen and flashes Aiba the time. “It’s eleven minutes to one and we’re all still awake, so why the hell _not_ grab something to eat?”

It’s not exactly uncommon for them to be wide awake for long hours after _Kouhaku_ every year. Thankfully, they had the next three days off. Nino has a strong hunch that Aiba won’t be sleeping at all this morning – not until all that excitement has worn off. Even if the result hadn’t been in their favour in the end, Aiba still had “fun”. As always.

Aiba snorts, eyes suspicious. “ _You’re_ hungry?”

Nino glowers at him. “I skipped lunch and dinner. Got too jittery for the performances.”

“Ah. Right.”

“I think there’s a nice soba place down that street over there,” Ohno speaks up to Nino’s instant relief, his interest and stomach showing with a small grumble. He points somewhere out the window. Aiba mumbles something in agreement, sliding his phone into his breast pocket and sharing a tired but content smile with Ohno. They both lean back and scrub their hands through their hairs, sending a smelly cloud of hair products into the air.

Nino either feels hopeful or nauseous. He can’t assimilate the two feelings. He just knows that one of them is rising rapidly. Until Aiba says, “Sho-chan, wanna come along with us?”

Nino angles himself in Sho’s direction, dismayed. The other man is still looking pensively out the window. His phone is also in his hand. The screen is on, messages are seemingly unread, but Sho makes no move to unlock it or read them. It’s clear that Sho’s previous party-loving alter-ego from their performances had long since died down. He would _never_ turn down an opportunity to eat; it’s just a crime to refuse food in Sho’s books. Nino knows this much. He hadn’t thought this one through enough.

“I’m worried about Matsujun.”

A sigh comes from one of them. Ohno leans over and wraps a hand around Sho’s shoulder, rubbing into it gently with two of his fingers. “He’s a grown man, Sho-kun. He can handle his own problems. We’ve all done it before.”

“That’s the thing,” Sho snaps. “He hasn’t _got_ any problems, Satoshi-kun. It’s all the damn media. They won’t stop hassling him. They didn’t have to do that. Not this week.”

The tension in the van rises drastically after that. Nino massages his index finger into the bridge of his nose, brooding. His chances are looking pretty damn dismal now. He almost doesn’t even want to try anything on Sho while he’s in such a foul mood with Jun clouding his every thought and worry. Don’t get him wrong – he’s concerned about Jun’s predicament, too. Such a groundless and nasty rumour could have proved another challenge for the group to battle through over the New Year’s period – but they’ve managed to pull through. For now. And all four of them will have to watch over Jun carefully in the meantime. He’s going to hate that, but it is what it is.

“Come on, Aiba-chan,” Ohno says softly after reading Sho’s unyielding temperament. He gives the conflicted man one last sympathetic pat and jumps out the open door. Aiba asks Nino once more if he wants to tag along, even trying to yank Nino out with him, but when he gets a vigorous shaking of the head, he clambers across Nino’s legs to follow Ohno out. The door slides shut behind him, punctuating the silence that follows.

Unexpectedly, Sho immediately looks to Nino. “What do you think?”

Nino jerks a little. “What do I think of...what?” he asks cautiously. “Jun-kun?”

“Mmm.”

“...I don’t want to believe it,” Nino admits, forcing down the inappropriate yawn he feels coming on. “I feel like he would have told us something like that in advance.”

“Exactly what I thought!” Sho remarks with a raised fist. He quickly lowers it and sinks back into his seat, glaring out the window again with a renewed gloom. “With all that’s been going on lately, I totally forgot the year was coming to an end again. It’s easy to get distracted this time of the year...”

Nino lifts his chin. Sho’s just unassumingly given him an opening. He subtly unlocks his phone near his thigh and sees that it’s 00:56.

“It also kind of blows that we’re busy at midnight every single year,” Sho articulates in the same bummed-out voice, a hand perched under his jaw now. Nino focuses on his profile, stuck in thought. He thinks he can follow where Sho’s train of thought is going. He’s too distracted by Sho’s nose for a moment.

“Sho-chan,” he tests.

“Yeah?”  
  
“You really aren’t hungry?”

Sho shakes his head without turning. “Nah. I think I’ll just...enjoy this moment of quiet. This doesn’t happen much, huh?”

Nino slowly undoes his seatbelt and lets it roll back up quietly. He makes sure their driver still isn’t in the area (he left some ten minutes ago to grab a bento from the convenience store in the next block) and shyly scoots over next to Sho.

“Got anyone to kiss at midnight?” he opens with a tease. Sho spares him one blank look – one that Nino almost thinks is withering and his first instinct is to sit back in his damn seat and shut _up_ – but then the smallest most pathetic laugh leaves his friend. It’s the saddest thing Nino’s heard on him all year. The harsh yellow glare of the car’s inside light cases over his face in a depressing way, making his skin look sallow and sunken. Tired. Sho’s thumb runs over his lower lip.

“But it’s already past midnight. Almost one, right?”

“It’s almost midnight in other places around the world,” Nino reminds him, playfully indignant. “You should know that with all your travels. China’s an hour behind us, aren’t they?”

Sho pauses to process that information accordingly. The cogs are turning in his mind; Nino can see. “Midnight, huh? Looks like I’m going to be all alone this year,” he plays along, dejectedly sighing and looking down.

“What a pity,” Nino comments with puckered lips to fight the smile off his face, “but also, what a coincidence. I also happen to be on my own this year.”

“Kazu.”

Nino’s thighs jolt a little at his seldom used first name – not just because of that, but because it’s coming from _Sho_ of all people.

“Sho.”

But it’s clear he wasn’t using his name in an authoritative way. The older man is fiddling with his fingers, looking at them, pinching the skin between the gaps without thinking. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“That depends on a lot of things. Would you like me to?”

Nino casually rests his elbow on the headrest and stares Sho down. He hides his smile there as the wariness seeps into Sho’s expression. Followed quickly by flickering eyes; he’s nervous.

Sho hastily pretends to be squinting at his watch. “I only have about twenty seconds to make a decision, huh?”

Expectant, Nino folds his legs underneath himself and keeps his eyes trained on Sho’s purposefully slow movements.

Sho pinches the end of his nose, inhaling deeply before stretching over the front seats to twist the key left in the ignition. The light above them goes out. It’s all noise after that: Sho slapping the door a few times in an attempt to find the button that locked all of the car’s doors at once; a pained “Ow!” when he made his way back to the seat and bashed his arm against the window. Nino can only smile fondly.

Sho grimaces, laughing into the darkness. He shows his glowing watch face. “Ten... nine... eight,” he stage whispers with the faintest giggle. He knows Nino is doing the same in his head. “Happy New Year, Nino.”

“Happy New Year, Sho,” Nino returns in a tiny voice, grinning.

“Four... three...”

Amongst the whispering, Nino feels a gentle finger rest on his nose, tapping and nudging against it affectionately. It moves to stroke the bridge of his nose, and then the inner part of his cheek. He reminds himself that _he_ is supposed to be the one doing the surprising, but Sho always has a way of making it seem like his own surprise with subtle otherwise insignificant gestures like these.

Sho moves the finger away without warning and his lips greet Nino’s, just above his upper lip. A total miss; it is pitch black, after all. They share a little laugh at the clumsy contact. Sho reinitiates the kiss. Together they press into the leather seats and make out sweetly, Nino’s hands travelling down and almost getting carried away in the unexpected heat of the moment. He sinks himself down into Sho’s lap and starts to rock. And he really would have given himself over had they not sprung apart in shock at the finger rapping impatiently on the passenger seat’s window. Their disgruntled and frozen manager, holding up his plastic bag with food and shaking it. Aiba and Ohno are standing behind him, shivering and equally grumpy.

Thankfully, Sho had had the brains to turn the light out beforehand. Nino scrambles back into his position on the far left, feigning nonchalance and fumbling with his phone, while Sho climbs over to unlock the door with an apologetic smile and an explanation at the ready.

“Needed some shut-eye and privacy, sorry,” are the words that don’t impress their manager at all. The door snaps open and the lights go on simultaneously.

“You want sleep and privacy? Go home,” the older man grumbles, “Let’s get going.”

Sho settles in, turning the same smile on Nino and sighing as Ohno clambered in between them again with a plastic box in hand. Nino is briefly distracted by the sight of salad, reminded of Ohno’s steadfast vow to not eat anything fatty in the coming year and, most important of all, to not gain weight. It makes him laugh.

 ** _come home with me and we’ll pick up where we left off. let’s ring in the new year_** _,_ Nino texts Sho after a brief moment of deliberation. He takes away the question mark he had placed at the end of the sentence, and sends it. He desperately wants so much more than that tame little exchange of kisses, but isn’t sure if sho is in the same boat. He’s somewhere drifting in the surrounding water, Nino is sure, but most probably not even near the boat. He will say no. Nino prepares himself. Sho can’t even use the excuse of work since they’re free for the following three days, so the rejection is sure to sting all the more and haunt him for approximately a month. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sho lean forward, catching his gaze. He smiles and tries to make himself visible behind Ohno’s profile.

He bites the inside of his cheek and nods.

 


End file.
